Monday, June 18, 2012
So what.
You're searching for something, but you don't know what it looks like.
Is it in your room, in your chest, in your neighborhood? Is it on the
internet, is it at the coffee shop? You imagine what it sounds like,
tastes like - vague memories shrouded in the fog of your youth inform a
sense of nostalgia - is it longing? Are you lonely or just alone? Is it
painful or simply quiet? You're not sure what it feels like but it
smells something like the ocean (remember never to
run hand in hand with someone into the crashing waves). It smells like laundry & sweat & the honeysuckle bush down the
block on the way to the bar. Is it romance, or simply symmetry? So we
like the same things. So we stay up all night. So we tell each other our
dreams. So we love each others flaws. It doesn't mean anything - I mean, come on, we're
just trying to have a good time.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Hot for teacher (from Charlotte's diary)
I was one of the last letter-writers. I wrote letters that were adored, then letters that were never responded to, then letters that were never read, then letters that were returned unopened. And that meant only something of the worst: my letter-reader no longer loved me, or was dead.
It began as a schoolgirl crush. I was the schoolgirl studying or my doctorate and struggling to understand the changes in my body at the same time. I could comprehend microbial cellular structure, replicate a human genome, name every bone in the human body by its Latin name. But getting my period confused the hell out of me, and my for a while my hormones seemed to be turning my world upside down.
Professor Colin Hardt, M.D., P.h. D, 27 years old and therefore over twice my age, had gone from a teacher who stimulated my mind to a fantasy that stimulated my suddenly awakened desires, seemingly overnight. I couldn’t help dreaming about him, much as I tried. I woke up some mornings in a sweat, the rouge-tainted images of us entwined in passionate embraces fresh in my mind. In my dreams, I carefully slipped off his thin black tie, unbuttoned the crisp white shirt he wore to class, admired his sleek, muscular chest. In class the next day, I refused to speak, terrified that I would accidentally blurt out some juicy detail from my fantasy the night before.
It began as a schoolgirl crush. I was the schoolgirl studying or my doctorate and struggling to understand the changes in my body at the same time. I could comprehend microbial cellular structure, replicate a human genome, name every bone in the human body by its Latin name. But getting my period confused the hell out of me, and my for a while my hormones seemed to be turning my world upside down.
Professor Colin Hardt, M.D., P.h. D, 27 years old and therefore over twice my age, had gone from a teacher who stimulated my mind to a fantasy that stimulated my suddenly awakened desires, seemingly overnight. I couldn’t help dreaming about him, much as I tried. I woke up some mornings in a sweat, the rouge-tainted images of us entwined in passionate embraces fresh in my mind. In my dreams, I carefully slipped off his thin black tie, unbuttoned the crisp white shirt he wore to class, admired his sleek, muscular chest. In class the next day, I refused to speak, terrified that I would accidentally blurt out some juicy detail from my fantasy the night before.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Excerpt from Elena's "Third Manifesto" for the No Impact Movement
Is the revolution imminent or is it too late?
We have no wars in our backyards, we do no harm. Our routines mean our lives are safe and shrouded in the Great Lie; all is well and will be forever. We have unlimited resources, we are too small to harm the planet, we will live forever. Waking up to the TRUTH that we are on the verge of collapse, on the edge of a Fallen Empire, that the recession will only recede further like the tide gathering into a tsunami wave, to come crashing back to shore leaving only destruction in its wake. We do not have to run from the shore, closer to the center; we do not need to gather our possessions and put them into a rocket-ship and shoot ourselves into space to escape. No, we can gather our families and burrow underground and build an existence in harmony with our destinies.
You are governed by corporations, you work for something that doesn’t work for you. Make your life into a work of art, not a sales pitch, not a commodity. Collect relationships, not possessions. Be a liability to your own assets.
The spoils of war are its victims, speaking louder and clearer than ever, falling on deaf ears. They look exactly like you and me. The passengers of malfunctioning Toyotas, the engineers who burned to death during the explosion of the oil rig, the ecosystem irreparably fucked: a large fraction of the World is literally drowning in OIL and not enough voices of reason or protest are breaking through the great filter of the men behind the curtain, wielding duvetyn. Their crimes will not be exposed enough to be brought to light, the evil will not serve justice. The CEOs are criminals, killers, warlords, mafia bosses, cartel-runners. Freedom is only free if you are a richwhitemale and even then your freedom is subsidized. As this colossal wave of crime grows in size and strength, so do statistics and percentages of unemployment, lowered wages, and inflation, but they tell us to Trust Them. Everything will be back the way it was soon enough.
Capitalism took blueprints from fascism and camouflaged the weapons so they looked like gifts, disguised the battle plan as “Economics”. But I’m telling you, really, this epidemic is very real & terrifying but you need not be afraid; the world will not crumble into chaos when the systems’ collapse becomes apparent to the public (because it IS happening we just choose not to be aware of it yet) we will not be overrun with violence and anarchy unless our fear drives us to destroy all that we have left over, what little will survive the flood.
We have no wars in our backyards, we do no harm. Our routines mean our lives are safe and shrouded in the Great Lie; all is well and will be forever. We have unlimited resources, we are too small to harm the planet, we will live forever. Waking up to the TRUTH that we are on the verge of collapse, on the edge of a Fallen Empire, that the recession will only recede further like the tide gathering into a tsunami wave, to come crashing back to shore leaving only destruction in its wake. We do not have to run from the shore, closer to the center; we do not need to gather our possessions and put them into a rocket-ship and shoot ourselves into space to escape. No, we can gather our families and burrow underground and build an existence in harmony with our destinies.
You are governed by corporations, you work for something that doesn’t work for you. Make your life into a work of art, not a sales pitch, not a commodity. Collect relationships, not possessions. Be a liability to your own assets.
The spoils of war are its victims, speaking louder and clearer than ever, falling on deaf ears. They look exactly like you and me. The passengers of malfunctioning Toyotas, the engineers who burned to death during the explosion of the oil rig, the ecosystem irreparably fucked: a large fraction of the World is literally drowning in OIL and not enough voices of reason or protest are breaking through the great filter of the men behind the curtain, wielding duvetyn. Their crimes will not be exposed enough to be brought to light, the evil will not serve justice. The CEOs are criminals, killers, warlords, mafia bosses, cartel-runners. Freedom is only free if you are a richwhitemale and even then your freedom is subsidized. As this colossal wave of crime grows in size and strength, so do statistics and percentages of unemployment, lowered wages, and inflation, but they tell us to Trust Them. Everything will be back the way it was soon enough.
Capitalism took blueprints from fascism and camouflaged the weapons so they looked like gifts, disguised the battle plan as “Economics”. But I’m telling you, really, this epidemic is very real & terrifying but you need not be afraid; the world will not crumble into chaos when the systems’ collapse becomes apparent to the public (because it IS happening we just choose not to be aware of it yet) we will not be overrun with violence and anarchy unless our fear drives us to destroy all that we have left over, what little will survive the flood.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Racing Death to the finish line
ELENA
I have grown accustomed to the fear of death.
The fear is omnipresent like my shadow, something I have grown out of fearing even though it is still terrifying. It is there when I wake up and the morning and when I fall asleep at night. And it is there in my dreams, the ones when the world is engulfed in flames, the ones when every inch of the planet has been covered in ice, the ones when the meteor is so ominous in the sky that it eclipses the sun, so that for a few agonizing minutes everyone will look up at the same time and let out a collective scream of pure terror.
The end is nigh, I don’t care. I have to stay alive long enough to greet the end of the world. Perhaps I will lend my scream to the mass hysteria. Perhaps I will leap from a cliff into the Pacific just before Humanity’s End can catch me.
I do not run from death because I fear him. I’ve got to get to the sinners before He does.
My husband and I met at a charity banquet for Darfur. I was a pale, straight-laced WASP girl from Southampton with a father with a semi-permanent position in the single digits in the Forbes 400 and a supermodel for a mother. He was a tan, smooth-talking businessman with a P.h. D. and a penchant for girls ten years his junior. I was seduced by his charm, his influence, his ability to make me cry out in bed like I never had before. We were married within one year, and almost made it an entire decade before I caught on that he used me to get to my father.
It wasn’t my father’s money that Michael wanted, it was his power. And the best way for him to attain that power was to become closer to him than his own daughter; an apprentice, an heir-in-law to the monopoly that my father had created. He learned how to oppress the lower class and crush the dreams of future generations with only a few swift, nearly invisible, and wholly evil maneuvers, from the man who built an empire off of these talents.
And I was the naïve, unsuspecting empress. Until I decided to do something evil, too.
An undercover monk gave me a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita in a parking lot.
I was sitting in the open trunk of my car smoking a joint. I was 18 years old. The man told me I had a pure mind and a pure heart, and insisted I take his hard copy of this holy book.
“I only have five dollars,” I insisted, politely trying to make him leave me alone. I felt bad that he was trying to give me a book, but the defensive side of me was also suspicious that he wanted more money.
“No need to pay me. One day you will return the favor in a momentous way. You have a pure heart, one that can absorb all the pain of humanity and heal it.”
I chuckled. “That’s a lot of responsibility.”
“Not one person on this earth has yet been born in such perfect union that he was unafraid to sacrifice his dreams for the salvation of Man.”
I stopped smiling. The way that he spoke was so natural, his dialect unwavering, that I was completely at a loss for how to read him. My instincts told me that he knew exactly what he was talking about, as if someone had told him the answer to a notoriously unsolvable riddle.
I looked at the cover of the book in my hands. The artwork was beautiful, but the binding was cheap, the printing of the colors and the glossy sheen covering it giving it a somewhat sad appearance. I was unaware that the real beauty laid in the contents.
The man smiled gently, like a father who becomes nostalgic for the blissful ignorance of his youth when he sees it in his own child.
“Take your time. It’s a long book.” He nodded and continued on his way. He looked to be around 30, a little tan, with neatly trimmed chestnut-colored hair. The way he walked, so sure of himself, so light, his feet leaving no impression on the dead grass beneath him.
I would not open the book for three years.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
It could never be enough: Excerpt from "The Vultures"
Hello, this is an excerpt from my second book, "The Vultures". I've been working on it for about five years. Its a coming-of-age story about a band that goes on tour after graduating high school, centering on two protagonists who struggle with their love for one another despite their differing values.
Its about growing up when you try your hardest not to:
ADAM
What will become of us?
She leaves these messages on my voicemail: she says, Hey, it’s Me. Like I don’t know it’s Envy, calling me from Scotty’s phone because she lost her Blackberry when she was drunk. I can’t stop her from over here. I can’t slow her down when she slurs an apology onto a damp Starbucks napkin, I can’t taste her on the envelope she sent my letter in.
We didn’t stop speaking, but we lost touch. I retrace my steps; I walk backwards through my simple life before Envy like a ghost. Into the hotel lobby where I first held her, trusting her. Outside Hawk’s House where I helped her carry her drum equipment and she invited me into her life.
What will become of her? Will she become one of those girls she hates, or is she already? One hundred miles, a seven-dollar train ride, but it’s too much for her. We tried, we really tried to spend the rest of our lives together, and we only made it six months.
What Envy and I shared could not exist outside of the van. It could thrive on the open road, but it could not stand still. Nothing is ever lost, she used to say, it is only somewhere else. We were somewhere else, together, somewhere with seductive palm trees, somewhere with seagulls singing above a marina, somewhere where we didn’t make promises, only cultivated hope. We didn’t tie each other down, we set each other free like a flurry of kites soaring into the sky.
What will become of me? If I can’t run away with her, then where will I run to? One day I’ll quit the motel for good, and find another job that I don’t hate yet. One day I’ll meet another girl, and maybe she will tell me all her secrets before someone else does. She won’t talk about quitting smoking, she will just quit. But I know whoever she is, she won’t be good enough for a very long time.
And until then I’ll sit with my back turned to the parking lot outside the snow-frosted window of the truck stop. I’ll listen to Carter’s miserable stories and Miranda’s self-loathing complaints until my ears bleed. I’ll put my guitar up for sale on craigslist but I’ll keep asking too much for it so that if someone is ever going to take it from me, it better be worth letting go.
One day she will stop sending me letters. Or, one day I will send one of hers back, unopened. Or maybe I will actually respond to one of them. I have so much to say, but it never comes out right, so I bite my tongue and hope that by the time I’m ready to talk, she won’t want to listen anymore.
Its about growing up when you try your hardest not to:
ADAM
What will become of us?
She leaves these messages on my voicemail: she says, Hey, it’s Me. Like I don’t know it’s Envy, calling me from Scotty’s phone because she lost her Blackberry when she was drunk. I can’t stop her from over here. I can’t slow her down when she slurs an apology onto a damp Starbucks napkin, I can’t taste her on the envelope she sent my letter in.
We didn’t stop speaking, but we lost touch. I retrace my steps; I walk backwards through my simple life before Envy like a ghost. Into the hotel lobby where I first held her, trusting her. Outside Hawk’s House where I helped her carry her drum equipment and she invited me into her life.
What will become of her? Will she become one of those girls she hates, or is she already? One hundred miles, a seven-dollar train ride, but it’s too much for her. We tried, we really tried to spend the rest of our lives together, and we only made it six months.
What Envy and I shared could not exist outside of the van. It could thrive on the open road, but it could not stand still. Nothing is ever lost, she used to say, it is only somewhere else. We were somewhere else, together, somewhere with seductive palm trees, somewhere with seagulls singing above a marina, somewhere where we didn’t make promises, only cultivated hope. We didn’t tie each other down, we set each other free like a flurry of kites soaring into the sky.
What will become of me? If I can’t run away with her, then where will I run to? One day I’ll quit the motel for good, and find another job that I don’t hate yet. One day I’ll meet another girl, and maybe she will tell me all her secrets before someone else does. She won’t talk about quitting smoking, she will just quit. But I know whoever she is, she won’t be good enough for a very long time.
And until then I’ll sit with my back turned to the parking lot outside the snow-frosted window of the truck stop. I’ll listen to Carter’s miserable stories and Miranda’s self-loathing complaints until my ears bleed. I’ll put my guitar up for sale on craigslist but I’ll keep asking too much for it so that if someone is ever going to take it from me, it better be worth letting go.
One day she will stop sending me letters. Or, one day I will send one of hers back, unopened. Or maybe I will actually respond to one of them. I have so much to say, but it never comes out right, so I bite my tongue and hope that by the time I’m ready to talk, she won’t want to listen anymore.
Friday, April 9, 2010
THE DRY SPELL: Prologue
ELENA
I know he is here.
My senses are heightened with the silence of the desert, my ears pricking up like a fawn stalked in the forest. I can hear his labored breathing, heavy from decades of Cuban cigar smoke. I can smell his repulsive cologne, hanging so thick in the air it chokes me and makes me want to cough, but I must remain as still as an elf owl.
The hunter is here, in my home. My husband is here.
I have managed to lock myself in a suffocating compartment beneath my house, and as I hear his Italian leather shoes crushing the gravel above me, I recall the childhood story of the three little pigs. The big bad wolf has come to blow my house down, and he has come wearing his usual disguise.
The analogy of the wolf does not quite fit, however. He is not a lone wolf, but more like a leader of a pack of hyenas. One would think someone as quiet as a mouse and delicate as a bluebird would pose no threat to him, but still he has come. He has come to take my life. I have nowhere to run in a landscape of mica and dust, so I must hide, shutting my eyes so tightly so that maybe I can disappear.
He crashes through the house like a hurricane, destroying everything in his path. My garden is demolished. My handmade clothes are torn to shreds. My kitchen where I prepare thousands of raw, vegan meals to malnourished children and the impoverished inhabitants of Skid Row, my living room where I have gathered meetings of friends and supporters of The No Impact movement, my bedroom where I have prayed for enlightenment, guidance, and (most importantly) safety and freedom from my husband, the CEO of the most powerful computer company in the world; all of these sacred places in my home are devoured by the Man with the Insatiable Hunger.
In the darkness of my hiding place I am smiling. He cannot take away from me what I have acquired because the wealth cannot be measured by any physical currency. I am smiling with the knowledge that the world is ending, and therefore none of the things we used to own/He owns/I had/He destroyed will remain when it is over.
I am smiling because, though he may be the richest man in the world, I am the most powerful woman. He knows this, though the declaration has never passed through my lips. I am smiling because the man who has always preferred sleeping with other women is now jealous of me.
I am smiling because he will never catch me.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
CHAPTER ONE: THE END
MITCHELL
April 14, 2010
“I wish I could fuck every girl in the world…” Natalie sings along to this song on the radio, filling in the censored swear words. She dances along to the music, her breasts bouncing around under her tiny tank top. I laugh and nod at her, “Me, too.”
She punches me in the arm. “Well, too bad, you can’t.” I turn the music down and pull in to the employee lot of Caesar’s. Natalie gives me a peck on the cheek and gets out of the car, her skimpy waitress uniform slung over her forearm.
I park in the corner spot in the back so that I can get high before my shift. The white powder takes on a certain glow in the tungsten lighting of the parking garage. With the speed and finesse I have acquired dealing cards and cutting decks, I quickly chop up a line of coke with my credit card and squeeze my rolled-up bill until the last of it has sparkled up into my brain. I hide the evidence in the glove compartment, get out of my ’65 Monte Carlo, and head to work.
I was promoted to Caesar’s Palace from Terrible’s, the off-Strip shithole, four years ago. Caesar’s is the best place to work in terms of pay and labor laws, and we get all kinds of crazy motherfuckers in this joint. Young film execs, frat boys, rich old fogeys and their bored, bedazzled twenty-something escorts, poker pros, soccer dads. I’ve seen them all. I run the craps table from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. With the exception of a brief cigarette break, it’s a grueling shift, but most nights I enjoy it.
I’m 28 and I have lived in Vegas for six years. I dropped out of community college and moved here with a girlfriend, who is probably passed out in her dealer’s bed somewhere in the desert, or maybe she moved back to the Valley to live with her parents. We dated for six years. We were supposed to be married by now.
I used to be a good kid. I got good grades in high school. That girl took me for a ride, and it wasn’t long after we moved here that things got ugly. It ended as quickly and furiously as it started. I’ve been accumulating bad habits ever since. First I started smoking, then drinking heavily. Then I got into pot, then acid, then uppers, then coke. I started stealing to pay for these things. I slept with lots of other women after Emma. Everything I quit somehow led to starting something worse. When I decided to stop smoking weed, I smoked cigarettes more heavily. My lungs are littered with holes, all filled in with ash.
I know that all this means I’m going to die soon. But we are all going to die soon. It’s been real good for business.
Some smart-ass in Washington teamed up with a bunch of NASA guys and came on the news to break it to us: the end is nigh. 2012 is real, and there is nothing we can do about it. The meteor is headed straight for us, real mean, like it’s God’s great vendetta against his hopeless, spoiled children, and it’s gonna wipe us out like we never even happened.
This caused mass hysteria a year ago when they announced it, but most people have stopped freaking out by now. We’ve got three years left before it hits, so until then, people have chosen to either continue life as usual, complete with grocery shopping and IKEA and Starbucks and 9 to 5. Or they did what I did before I knew about the end of the world: gave up all morality and moved to Vegas.
Like I said, business is booming. The hotels are filled to the brim nightly with guests ready to throw it all away on booze and girls. Caesar’s charges absurd amounts because the patrons will pay. The 401k is worthless now, might as well enjoy watching it burn.
Not only do I get great tips, but I reap the other benefits to working here that take place behind closed doors and underground. I’m talking about the cocktail waitresses, the strippers, the cheating wives. My charm could outlive me, or maybe my reputation in bed. It’s so easy to pick up girls in Vegas that I’ve given myself challenges: how far can I go? How degrading can my dialogues with these women be? The truth is I really don’t have to say anything, they are more likely to go for me if I don’t. I haven’t heard a man ask a woman if he can buy her a drink in this place in months. Its no longer necessary. There are no risks when there is nothing to lose.
April 14, 2010
“I wish I could fuck every girl in the world…” Natalie sings along to this song on the radio, filling in the censored swear words. She dances along to the music, her breasts bouncing around under her tiny tank top. I laugh and nod at her, “Me, too.”
She punches me in the arm. “Well, too bad, you can’t.” I turn the music down and pull in to the employee lot of Caesar’s. Natalie gives me a peck on the cheek and gets out of the car, her skimpy waitress uniform slung over her forearm.
I park in the corner spot in the back so that I can get high before my shift. The white powder takes on a certain glow in the tungsten lighting of the parking garage. With the speed and finesse I have acquired dealing cards and cutting decks, I quickly chop up a line of coke with my credit card and squeeze my rolled-up bill until the last of it has sparkled up into my brain. I hide the evidence in the glove compartment, get out of my ’65 Monte Carlo, and head to work.
I was promoted to Caesar’s Palace from Terrible’s, the off-Strip shithole, four years ago. Caesar’s is the best place to work in terms of pay and labor laws, and we get all kinds of crazy motherfuckers in this joint. Young film execs, frat boys, rich old fogeys and their bored, bedazzled twenty-something escorts, poker pros, soccer dads. I’ve seen them all. I run the craps table from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. With the exception of a brief cigarette break, it’s a grueling shift, but most nights I enjoy it.
I’m 28 and I have lived in Vegas for six years. I dropped out of community college and moved here with a girlfriend, who is probably passed out in her dealer’s bed somewhere in the desert, or maybe she moved back to the Valley to live with her parents. We dated for six years. We were supposed to be married by now.
I used to be a good kid. I got good grades in high school. That girl took me for a ride, and it wasn’t long after we moved here that things got ugly. It ended as quickly and furiously as it started. I’ve been accumulating bad habits ever since. First I started smoking, then drinking heavily. Then I got into pot, then acid, then uppers, then coke. I started stealing to pay for these things. I slept with lots of other women after Emma. Everything I quit somehow led to starting something worse. When I decided to stop smoking weed, I smoked cigarettes more heavily. My lungs are littered with holes, all filled in with ash.
I know that all this means I’m going to die soon. But we are all going to die soon. It’s been real good for business.
Some smart-ass in Washington teamed up with a bunch of NASA guys and came on the news to break it to us: the end is nigh. 2012 is real, and there is nothing we can do about it. The meteor is headed straight for us, real mean, like it’s God’s great vendetta against his hopeless, spoiled children, and it’s gonna wipe us out like we never even happened.
This caused mass hysteria a year ago when they announced it, but most people have stopped freaking out by now. We’ve got three years left before it hits, so until then, people have chosen to either continue life as usual, complete with grocery shopping and IKEA and Starbucks and 9 to 5. Or they did what I did before I knew about the end of the world: gave up all morality and moved to Vegas.
Like I said, business is booming. The hotels are filled to the brim nightly with guests ready to throw it all away on booze and girls. Caesar’s charges absurd amounts because the patrons will pay. The 401k is worthless now, might as well enjoy watching it burn.
Not only do I get great tips, but I reap the other benefits to working here that take place behind closed doors and underground. I’m talking about the cocktail waitresses, the strippers, the cheating wives. My charm could outlive me, or maybe my reputation in bed. It’s so easy to pick up girls in Vegas that I’ve given myself challenges: how far can I go? How degrading can my dialogues with these women be? The truth is I really don’t have to say anything, they are more likely to go for me if I don’t. I haven’t heard a man ask a woman if he can buy her a drink in this place in months. Its no longer necessary. There are no risks when there is nothing to lose.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)